Worcester Cathedral is a magnificent sight as it rises majestically above the River Severn. Worcester has been the seat of a bishopric since the Seventh Century, Worcester Cathedral was served by monks until the Reformation. St Oswald and St Wulfstan were among the bishops. Since the Eighteenth Century, Worcester Cathedral has been famous for its part in the annual Three Choirs Festival, the oldest choral festival in existence. Today the Cathedral is the centre of a vibrant community of clergy and laypeople, offering the praises of God each day, serving the city and diocese of Worcester, and attracting visitors from all over the world.

Worcester Cathedral

Worcester Cathedral has been described as possibly the most interesting of all England’s cathedral’s, especially architecturally. It was founded it in 680. Saint Oswald then built another cathedral in 983, and established a monastery attached to it. Saint Wulfstan, who rebuilt the cathedral in 1084, began the present building. During Anglo-Saxon times, Worcester was one of the most important monastic cathedrals in the country. It was a centre of great learning, which continued into the later middle ages, when Worcester’s Benedictine monks went to university to study a variety of subjects, such as theology, medicine, law, history, mathematics, physics, and astronomy. Some of these medieval university textbooks still survive in the cathedral library today.

The monastery continued until 1540 when Henry VIII dissolved it, and some of the last monks became the first Dean and Chapter. The Worcester Cathedral was badly damaged in the civil wars, and as a consequence a major programme of rebuilding was required after the Restoration of Charles II. From the late seventeenth until the nineteenth centuries there were several campaigns to restore parts of the cathedral, but the Victorians from 1864-75 carried out the largest of these.

The Tower is the Cathedral’s third tower. The first fell down in 1175 and the second was taken down because it was unsafe. The present tower was completed in 1374. The stone work internally is 14th century in date but the exterior of the tower was re-faced in the 19th century as part of the Victorian restoration. The present cathedral tower was strengthened in the late 1980's /early 1990's, to ensure it is safe for the next 200 years